Martin's World » Music

Pandora – Free Personalised Web Radio

Site Administrator — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:37:33 +0000

Another recomendation from the BBC’s Click tv show is Pandora. Pandora is very clever. You start by telling Pandora the name of an artist or a track you like then Pandora starts playing a stream of music which is similar. The concept is very simple but the technology behind it looks quite sophisticated. Once your “station” is playing you can train Pandora by adding extra artists or by using the thumbs up and down buttons as each track plays.

So obviously I created a station based on Massive Attack and then added Portishead and Faithless to it. I have called my station “The Trip Hop Lounge” and it can be accessed by anyone (just click the link). Pandora really works because before long it also played tracks by Dubstar, Cabaret Voltaire and Tricky.

The really interesting thing about Pandora is that it is playing music that I like from many artists that I have never heard of before. I have already ordered two CDs by Curve just because they keep playing on my trip hop Pandora station.

Collected – The Best Of Massive Attack

martin — Mon, 01 May 2006 23:06:57 +0000

My top three favourite CDs are all by the same artist Massive Attack; Mezzanine, 100th Window and Protection. I’m rubbish at describing music but I will say that it’s very electronic, often with very moody atmospheric vocals and some times just a little bit dancy – I think the young people call it “trip hop”. Basically if I had any musical talent at all, this is the kind of music I would want to make.

So if I have all their albums why did I buy this ? Well I was in an airport again on my way to the USA and just had to have something to listen to in my hire car (which by the way was a new convertible Mustang). If you haven’t heard Massive Attack before then this “greatest hits” collection is a great introduction to the band. If you like this then make sure you also check out U.N.K.L.E, Tricky’s Maxinque, Portishead and maybe some Faithless too.

Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel

martin — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:24:24 +0000

I have been a huge fan of Depeche Mode since I was a teenager. In recent years it has felt to me like they have been going off the rails a bit, but this new album is brilliant. It’s the CD that is constantly played in the car now. Reiss’ favourite track (and mine) is John The Revelator, he just keeps playing it over and over again – I’m scared I might end up getting sick of it !

Goldfrapp – Supernature

martin — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:15:41 +0000

I first spotted Goldfrapp on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on NewYears Eve (yes I know I’m sad watching TV on New Years Eve – I had the Flu so TV was the only option this year). With their great synth pop they sounded just like they had fallen out of the 80’s – absolutley fantastic. Although the whole album is great, there are three tracks that really stand out; Ooh La La, Ride A White Horse and my favourite, Number 1. I’m looking forward to checking out their 2 earlier CDs.

46bliss – In A Long Time

Site Administrator — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 18:28:51 +0000

Wow, I really like this. I heard this track on Adam Curry’s show on “Podsafe music“. Adam and Patricia obviously have very different tastes to me. I must listen to more of 46bliss and see if they have a CD.

Kaiser Chiefs – Employment

Site Administrator — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:01:09 +0000

My current favourite CD is the Kaiser Chiefs’ Employment. It was recommended to me by the same friend who put me on to Kasabian, so without any hesitation I just ordered it from Amazon. I recognised the first track “Everyday I Love You Less and Less” immediately but the others took a few plays to grow on me. But now I’m totally into it. It’s also the CD that my Son always asks for now when he gets in my car.

Martin Stephenson

martin — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 19:32:32 +0000

This weekend I unpacked my turntable and dug out a number of my records. My Linn really is a thing of beauty! I have hooked up a PC to my amp and have been digitising a few records that I can’t get on CD any more. (In case you are interested how, check out the Audacity web site.) Amongst my great records, I have re-discovered my Martin Stephenson & The Daintees albums, Boat To Bolivia and Gladsome, Humour & Blue. Absolutely fantastic. It’s not quite the sort of stuff you’d expect me to be into, no electro kick drums or Trip-hop bass synths, just great songs and great musicians playing real instruments. I did a quick Google and found that Martin Stephenson is still going and has his own web site. Looks like there are some newer CD’s I should listen to. I see he is still playing live too, I’d love to see them live again. Any way, check out their music and the web site.

AAC vs MP3

Site Administrator — Fri, 06 May 2005 16:05:03 +0000

You probably know that there are a number of audio formats in addition to MP3 that you can use to store music in (WMA, OGG, WAV etc etc). I’ve always been an advocate of sticking with plain old MP3, simply because it’s the one standard that works with pretty much anything. But now I’ve discovered AAC, it should be just as open as MP3 and it sounds better than MP3 even at lower bit rates.

MP3 was originally designed to be the audio part of the MPEG1 video compression scheme. I have found that at bit rates of 192kbit/s and above the sound quality is really good. Only trouble is that at 192kbit/s my music collection takes up a lot more space on disk and more importantly on my iPod than I would like. Even with variable bit rate encoding (VBR) I still don’t get anywhere near as many music files per MByte as Apple and others would suggest.

I noticed that Apple and a number of other players have started to support a format called AAC or Advance Audio Coding. I had assumed it was just another proprietary niche format until I discovered that AAC is actually the audio part of the latest MPEG2 and MPEG4 video compression schemes. This gives it a lot more credibility in my eyes. I have a encoded a few of my albums at 128 kbit/s using AAC and I have to say the results are impressive. At 128 kbit/s sound quality is great and the file size is 2/3 that of a 192kbit/s VBR MP3 file.

One thing that is a little unusual is that AAC files can have different file extensions. We’re all used to mp3’s being .mp3, but I’ve seen AAC files named a number of things (.aac, .m4a, .m4b). iTunes names files encoded as AAC as .m4a. iTunes also recognises .m4b files as being AAC files but with allows the contents to be bookmarkable which is very useful for long-ish content like audio books or spoken word.

I’m not about to try and re-encode all my music from MP3 to AAC but I think I will now use it for any new music I buy.

More info on this subject:
Apple on MPEG-4 Audio: AAC